


Still-Vexed Bermoothes

by GloriaMundi



Category: Historical RPF, Pirates of the Caribbean
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, C16, Crossover, Gift Fic, Historical, M/M, Pirates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-05
Updated: 2010-03-05
Packaged: 2017-10-07 17:50:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/67644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloriaMundi/pseuds/GloriaMundi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What brought you here? To Deptford?"</p><p>"I'd heard tell," Jack dissembles, "of Sir Francis Drake, him they call the Queen's Pirate. I'd a mind to seek him out." And seek out simpler times, he does not say. The glory days, the golden age of piracy: before the likes of Cutler Beckett came along to spoil the game. Before the maps were all filled in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Still-Vexed Bermoothes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [p0wdermonkey](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=p0wdermonkey).



"Pray, sir, can you tell me where I might find Sir Francis Drake?"

And maybe these layabouts don't like the look of him, but honestly, is that due cause for such raucous mirth? Jack thinks not.

"Drake's away to singe the King of Spain's beard again. What's left of it," says the fellow with the most preposterous arrangement of facial hair. "But for sixpence," more laughter here; Jack's certain he's being gulled, "I'll show his ship."

Jack takes a moment to assess his situation. He is standing in an unpaved street, in a riverside town: may as well call it Deptford for the nonce. He has traversed uncharted oceans (and uncharted _otherness_) to pay a call on England's finest. He has come ashore alone, and fallen into dubious company.

Business as usual, then.

For want of any more promising option, he follows where he's led, keeping an eye on the three men trailing after him. One's surely a sailor, sunburnt and muscled; one's clad in sober colours and a regrettable hat; one has his hands shoved firmly in his pockets, and Jack'd lay money there's a knife or two 'bout his person.

Jack settles his own hat more firmly on his head and keeps his eyes open.

Deptford Strand hasn't changed. Won't have changed. It's a warm day, and the odours of slaughterhouse and sewer pervade the air. A gaggle of females are staking out a tavern door, doubtless hoping the ale's strong enough to skew a man's attention in their favour. The road under Jack's boots is unpaved, hard dry mud ridged where, in less summery weather, heavy traffic's come this way. It's not, in short, so very different to his own memories of London River. Has the bloody map (and all that messy business with the pocket-watch and the burning rum and the stink of scorched hair) actually achieved what Tia Dalma'd assured him it would? Has it brought him back to the glory days of Drake and Hawkins and Raleigh? Or is it another of the woman's damned phant'sies?

 

True, the whores are clad in unusually quaint attire; the ships moored out in the river are of an old-fashioned rig (the sort of thing Hector goes for, come to think on't) and sixpence is uncommonly cheap for any kind of favour. Jack'd expected to be charged a shilling or more.

"Thar she lies!" crows Stragglebeard. Jack's gaze follows the man's black-nailed hand. He cranes his head. Looks again. Scowls.

"Right there," insists the blackguard. "Leastways, that's what's left of her. Tell ye what, for another sixpence I'll let ye have me very own relic of the mighty _Hind_: it's a mite less splint'ry, an' a sight less rotted, than aught ye'll find down there."

Splinters and rot are all that Jack can actually see: the picked-over skeleton of a proud (though smallish) vessel, a few timbers poking forlornly out of the water (well, _liquid_) that mercifully conceals the ravages of time.

But how much time?

"Beggin' your pardon, sir," says Jack, with a smile that makes up in glimmer whatever it might lack in sincerity, "what year is this?"

He tries to make the question sound wholly reasonable and not the utterance of a raving lunatick, but Stragglebeard's guffaw (and the way the sober-looking fellow crosses himself) indicate that the pretence isn't wholly successful.

"Why, sir, 'tis the thirty-fifth year of Queen Elizabeth's reign, long may she do so; the Year of our Lord fifteen hundred and ninety-three; the thirtieth day of May. Nice weather for the time of year, eh?"

"Oops," says Jack.

"Where've ye been, that ye don't know that?" demands the religious type. "Tell me, sir, be ye of the true faith?"

"Course I am," assures Jack, casting his eyes about for some indication -- Christ knows what -- of what said faith might be. Catholic? Protestant? Buddhist? It's so very easy to lose track.

"Never you mind the mooncalf," says a different voice: a more cultured voice, with an edge to it that Jack's learnt to associate with (imprimus) education and (secundus) authority in its many guises. Many unfriendly guises. He turns, anyway, to his rescuer, only to discover that the man hasn't been speaking to him at all.

"He with you?" says Stragglebeard, with a servile dip of the head.

"He is, sirrah," says the Authority Figure, who Jack's fairly sure he's never met in his life. He's tall and tow-headed, with a pinked pearl-buttoned doublet and a neatly-trimmed beard. Hovering at his shoulder is a rather less fancy and more fearsome figure, clearly Authority's guard-dog.

"I only ask," fawns Stragglebeard, "'cause he seems a touch ... touched, if ye see what I mean."

"The Sickness," intones the tall blond gent, "does take some poor fellows that way."

"Sickness?" says the religious fellow, edging away. "May he be well soon, sir."

"We'll have him to the apothecary," says the guard-dog, baring yellow teeth. "An' the barber," he adds, mirthfully.

"Really," says Jack, noting the rapid retreat of his Local Guides, "there's no call for medical intervention. I feel surprisingly well, consid--"

"What say you come along with me, sirrah?" says Authority, bestowing a toothily charming smile on Jack. "There's meat and drink awaits us, and fine company: and I assure you 'tis to your advantage, sir, to listen to our … proposition."

"Delighted," says Jack, as the guard-dog falls in behind him. "I'm Captain Jack Sparrow, by the way." If all's gone according to plan, they won't have heard of him. He quashes a sigh. "I don't b'lieve I caught your name."

"Robert Poley, Jack," says the blond fellow. "At your service." And Jack may be mad, misplaced and bemused, but he's not stupid enough to believe _that_.

* * *

The house they take him to is respectable enough: it's set back from the road, shaded by elms and framed by roses. Jack, unaccustomed to being received into the houses of the gentry -- though he may have found his way inside a number of same -- steps trepidatiously over the threshold.

"Wait here," Poley bids him. He and his guard-dog -- to whom Jack has not been introduced -- crowd through a door to the right, leaving Jack alone in a dark-panelled hallway. He can hear the murmur of several voices (all masculine) from the inner room, and high-pitched scolding from the back of the house; a glorious aroma of roasting meat pervades the place. Never one to question Fortuna's wiles, Jack takes the opportunity to admire the fixtures. (Nothing easily portable.)

The door swings open with a creak, allowing Jack a moment's grace to feign polite ennui. "Sirrah, will you join us?" says Poley, beckoning.

The parlour that Poley ushers him into is sparsely furnished. There's a table (already laden with a decent spread of victuals), a bench drawn up to it (laden with the guard-dog, who is sniffing doubtfully at his filthy paws), a bed in the corner behind -- on which last a third fellow's lounging, cleaning his fingernails with a dagger, though he lowers the dagger and raises his head to scowl at Jack.

He's a pretty one, all right: reddish hair, dark eyes, a flush in his fair skin which Jack diagnoses as the product of that decent-smelling claret in his glass. A few years younger than Jack (who, if you want to be pedantic about it, probably hasn't even been _born_ yet) and bestowing 'pon Jack's person the self-same approving appraisal that Jack's giving him.

Self-same not only in sentiment, but also, astonishingly, in form. Jack's intimately acquainted with the phiz he finds in sundry reflective surfaces, and this fellow might be a living mirror. The dark (and slightly bloodshot) eyes, albeit sans lamp-black; the gallant moustache; the full, kissable lower lip; the quizzical squint.

"This is the man?" his mirror enquires of Poley.

"Aye," says Poley.

"He'll need --"

"Later," snaps Poley, with a gesture that makes the other scowl fearsomely.

"Captain Jack Sparrow," interrupts Jack breezily, since nobody else has bothered to introduce him. "Delighted to make your acquaintance, sir …?"

"Master Marley. Poet and playmaker," says the fellow on the bed, sitting up and sheathing his dagger. "You may call me Kit. What hath sweet Robin told you of our venture?"

"Not a lot," says Jack. "But I've eyes in my head, and -- this might surprise you -- I weren't born yesterday." This is almost certainly true. "When a man bids a man to some high-toned abode for meat and drink and pleasant company, no questions asked, it's almost positively certain the second man'll find some mischief afoot. And given your honour's most pleasing resemblance to my good self --" Jack bows "--I'd lay money I'm to play your part in some masque or farce -- with, I make no doubt, hilarious consequences -- while you foot it away to France. Well, not literally 'foot'; there's some water in the way. But you catch my drift. Do I have the _right_ drift?"

There is a brief silence while the gathered company untangle his meaning.

"He's a sharp one," snarls the guard-dog, as though this quality's to be counted against Jack.

"You have it entirely, sir," says Kit with an intonation that infers just the opposite.

"Will you drink, Jack?" says Poley, gesturing Jack to the table. "I see your journey's been hard and hazardous: sit, eat of Mistress Bull's fine neat's-tongue pie, drink of this fine claret: no, this cup for you, sirrah."

Jack (ever biddable and easy til there's some profit in being otherwise) sits, serves himself, sips. The wine tastes of Singapore, of sleepy poppies: Jack slops pie-filling over Sweet Robin's fancy doublet, and in the ensuing flurry of dabs and pardons surreptitiously switches his cup for the guard-dog's. Kit, he notes, does not eat.

"You'll need a full belly, if you're to France," Jack says helpfully, gesturing at the oozing pie.

"Pray excuse me," says Kit. "I've little appetite for such a feast." A sharp sidelong glance at Jack. "My head aches. Perhaps I shall walk in Mistress Bull's garden and take the air."

"Perhaps I'll join you," says Jack. "Get to know the man I'm to play, eh?"

"Oh, you don't want to be doin' --" begins the guard-dog: "Frizer!" snaps Sweet Robin, and Frizer subsides.

Kit unfolds himself from the bed, stretching like a cat, and bends a smile on Jack that intimates appetites quite other than those amenable to satisfaction by neat's-tongue pie and French wine. "I shall endeavour to make myself known to you," he says sweetly. "And perhaps you'll return the favour."

This is as fine an invitation as any Jack's had today: he follows Kit out past the kitchen to a quiet, manicured sort of garden. There are bees and flowers courting; there is a sundial that tells noon; there is, somewhere, a bird singing its little heart out. It's all too still, settled, stifling for Jack; from Kit's restlessness this seems another sentiment they share.

"What brought you here? To Deptford?"

"I'd heard tell," Jack dissembles, "of Sir Francis Drake, him they call the Queen's Pirate. I'd a mind to seek him out." And seek out simpler times, he does not say. The glory days, the golden age of piracy: before the likes of Cutler Beckett came along to spoil the game. Before the maps were all filled in.

"You admire pirates, then?" Kit looks him up and down, lingeringly; the sea-boots, the sash, the souvenirs knotted in his hair, the lamp-black he wears 'gainst a stronger sun than England's. "Or, perhaps, you've ambitions that way yourself."

"I'm Captain Jack Sparrow," says Jack, exasperated. "I raised the _Pearl_ from the ocean's depths. I sacked Nassau Town without a shot fired; I've been to World's End and come back to tell the tale; I've …" He stares at the honeysuckle vining the wall, and doesn't see the flowers: he's back in Shipwreck, listening to Hector getting all sentimental about the good old days before Calypso; nay, back on that filthy carpet in Tortuga, celebrating the Armada's defeat in guise of Gloriana and her favourite --

"I take it, sir pirate, you're a man of more ambition than a quick cut and a pauper's coffin?" Kit's voice is low, mellifluous, seductive. "Not that you wouldn't make a pretty corpse."

Jack shrugs himself back into the moment, whenever it might be. What's past is past (or, possibly, future): here, now, he's other business to conduct. "Too right," he says to Kit, with a smirk for the compliment. "And I in turn take it that you're in need of swift passage -- and not off this mortal plain, neither."

"There's nothing plain about it," sighs Kit. "A coil, more like …" There's a distant look in the fellow's eyes, and Jack would give good money for a window to his thoughts. Another sigh: then Kit turns to him, resolute. They're at the end of the garden now, as far from the house as they can get: nevertheless, Kit's voice is low.

"I face arrest. Torture. Poley's frighted of what I might divulge, under … They need my corpse. Or," Kit waves a hand abstractedly at Jack, "a corpse that might be taken for mine own."

"I might've expressed a wish to be wanted for my body," says Jack, "but actually this wasn't precisely what I had in … mind."

"You're not surprised," notes Kit.

"Pirate, mate. So: you're to swap gear with me -- my effects being somewhat out of the mode -- and I'm to play your death scene. Is that it?"

"I'm sure you have a better idea," says Kit, with a warm look that would inspire better (or at least more _vitalising_) ideas in a corpse.

"More'n one," Jack admits, with another leer at Kit's nice hose. "But for now: I've a ship, moored just downriver of Greenwich."

"Kit?" calls Poley from within. "Are you done yet?"

"Just offering ... comfort," Kit shouts back. Poley makes a wordless sound of disgust: a door slams.

Jack's leer broadens 'til it's like to split his face. "Promises, promises," he says.

"I strive to keep those promises I make," Kit assures him. "Especially those that pledge some happy return."

"We've an accord, then, mate," says Jack. "_You_ bestow some of that vaunted comfort on me: _I'll_ bestow a berth aboard the _Pearl_."

"And, perhaps, some reciprocatory comforting?"

"'Tis very uncomfortable," says Jack, "to be under sentence of death. They had me up for hanging, once. Impersonating a cleric of the Church of England."

Kit's eyebrows go up.

"By coincidence, I myself am a Master of Divinity," he confides.

"Delightful," says Jack. "Me, I'm master of less ... elevated studies."

"I'd ask for instruction," Kit says, "but --"

"Hanging," supplies Jack. "You, that is."

"Hanging and hacking," says Kit darkly. "A short drop and a sudden stop's too quick a death for my sort. I've seen men drawn and quartered, Jack; 'tis fresh still in my memory, though I would it were not."

Jack makes a moue of sympathy. "So: what's the charge?"

"Say rather, which of 'em is true?"

"Try me," invites Jack.

"Heresy, blasphemy, brawling," says Kit, counting them off on his long fingers. "Atheism. Sodomy --"

"Oh, _good_," says Jack. They smirk at one another.

"And writing plays," concludes Kit.

"Can't be helped," says Jack breezily. "Still, plenty of opportunity for invention on a long ocean voyage."

"I'm prone to mal de mer," confesses Kit.

This is less than ideal, but Jack's confident he can effect a cure. 'Sides, the prospect of a long ocean voyage with Kit as his cabin-mate is vastly pref'rable to a knife 'twixt the ribs and another man's grave.

"Rum helps," he notes. "And I'll attempt to distract you."

"I'm certain you can be most extravagantly distracting," murmurs Kit, swaying forward.

Jack sways back. "An' I'm sure you can be excellently comforting," he says. "Though as yet --"

But then he finds himself silenced, or at least lost for words: true, there are noises emanating from their conjoined mouth, breathless moans and something that might've been a sigh, and the succulent sounds of a deep (and deeply filthy) kiss; Christ, Kit Marley knows how to kiss, and for an instant Jack fears he'll be outdone. He gives as good as he gets, though, if the redoubled fervour of Kit's embrace (and the way his hand's found its way beneath Jack's shirt, making Jack sigh and writhe and slide his own hands down Kit's back to that tautly-muscled arse he's been eyeing) is aught to go by.

"Marley!" comes Frizer's voice, from some point rather closer than the kitchen door. "Oh, you infernal -- Can you not leave the man be, e'en now?"

Kit Marley draws back, flushed and gasping and grinning as fiercely as Jack's sure he himself must be. "A moment more, I beg you!" he calls merrily. "We needs must discase and change garments, if this Jack's to play my part!"

Frizer retreats, muttering vile calumnies. Or so Jack presumes: he cannot spare a moment's attention for the fellow, not with Kit's hands … Kit's mouth … the swell and shove of Kit's prick against his own.

"Where are we bound?" murmurs Kit wetly against Jack's ear.

"I would have thought that obvious," Jack manages, his hands assailing the unfamiliar (and unnecessarily complicated) fastenings of Kit's attire.

"_After_," says Kit, fumbling with Jack's trowsers and sinking bonelessly to his knees.

"Singapore," says Jack, more or less at random: he's very much distracted. "The Indies -- East or West, I've -- oh Christ -- no preference." (Surely the East India Company's no more than a nasty ooze in its begetter's eye.) "Illyria! The sea-coast of Bohemia! The -- _Kit_!"

"Pray continue," says Kit sweetly, turning aside to spit neatly into Mistress Bull's flowerbed, and then smirking up at Jack with his mouth red and wet and messy.

"I was about," says Jack with dignity, "to suggest the still-vexed Bermoothes. Or the Spanish Main." Where might Drake be found, these days? Jack's confident his compass and that pocket-watch will lead him right. They've not done badly thus far.

"I've another suggestion," says Kit, hot-eyed. "To wit --"

"Marley!" The kitchen door creaks open again. Kit scowls: he's on his feet, still flushed and (Jack can't help noticing) enthusiastic, but abruptly ready for another sort of action. His dagger's in his hand again; he jerks his head t'wards the hedge.

"Kit! Wilt flee, and let all our schemes go to waste?" cries Robin Poley. Frizer, at his heels, saves his breath for curses. "There's nowhere to go, Kit! You shall be a free man, if only you do as I bid!"

"Fuck _that_ for a lark," says Kit Marley with glee, and yanks Jack through the gap in the hedge.

Jack shoves his hat more firmly onto his head. "I'll owe you one," he promises his new-found friend: and without more ado they're legging it down the lane like a pair of lads caught scrumping, heading for the river, the Bermoothes, the blank places on the new-drawn antique maps.

-end-

**Author's Note:**

> Written for **p0wdermonkey**'s natal day, 2010. Thanks to **tessabeth** for draft-reading and encouragement.
> 
> This fic wouldn't exist without [this comparison](http://osmond-riba.org/lis/MarloweBks.htm#pics), [Rodney Bolt's _History Play_](http://www.amazon.com/History-Play-Afterlife-Christopher-Marlowe/dp/1596910208), Anthony Burgess's _A Dead Man in Deptford_ and Elizabeth Bear's _The Stratford Man_.
> 
> Comments welcome, here or [at Dreamwidth](http://gloriamundi.dreamwidth.org/246820.html) or [at LiveJournal](http://viva-gloria.livejournal.com/258546.html)


End file.
